Prof. Bechthold is lecturing on ‘Multi-Scalar Design: Material Matters’ at Georgia Tech on January 15 at noon in the Flex Space, Caddell Building, 280 Ferst Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332-0680. The talk focuses on the challenges and opportunities provided by the expanded range of scales that design and science interact in.
MaP+S is founding partner of the Laboratory for Design Technologies (LDT), a new research organization at the GSD. LDT is the umbrella organization for all technology related GSD design labs such as REAL (Allen Sayegh), the Geometry Lab (Andrew Witt) and the City Form Lab (Andres Sevtsuk). LDT also integrates work by our colleagues currently not associated with a particular design lab – for example Prof. Sawako Kaijima. LDT is currently supported by several industry advisors that include Perkins & Will, Hickok Cole Architects, and Advanced Multitech Corp. We expect to be announcing other industry partners shortly…
Chuck Hoberman’s course review is testing small models and large prototypes of pneumatically actuated origami systems that could potentially assemble into building-scale kinetic structures. Hoberman’s work is expanding the known approaches to kinetic building systems, with potential applications in other fields such as consumer products.
We hope to see many of you at ACADIA 2018 in Mexico City. We will be presenting a paper on Ferrofluidic Casting and two on the 3D printing of ceramics!
• Responsive Spatial Print: Clay 3D printing of spatial lattices using real-time model recalibration. Hyeonji Claire Im; Sulaiman Alothman; Jose Luis García del Castillo (Thur 9.30am)
• Fluid Equilibrium: Material computation in ferrofluidic castings. Zach Seibold; Jonathan Grinham; Olga Geletina; Onye Ahanotu; Allen Sayegh; James Weaver; Martin Bechthold (Fri 4.45 pm)
• Ceramic Morphologies: Precision and control in paste-based additive manufacturing. Zach Seibold; Kevin Hinz; José Luis García del Castillo y López; Nono Martínez Alonso; Saurabh Mhatre; Martin Bechthold (Sat 3 pm)
Doctoral candidate Jose Luis García del Castillo will be co-teaching the “Talk to a Wall” workshop at the forthcoming ACADIA 2018 conference in Mexico City.
This workshop will be a collaborative design exercise which seeks to explore new pluralities on the intersubjectivities of human and machine within the context of architectural design methods. Participants will train a neural network (LSTM) by procedurally sketching architectural ideas, they will then select words and images that associate to those sketches. The network will learn from the participant drawings and do searches in a higher dimensional space to understand the associations between the semantics and their drawings. The model should then be able to draw in a similar style to that of the participant when triggered by a concept word or by an initial set of parameters. The model predictions will then be translated into robotic motion parameters to drive the kinematics of a 6-axis industrial robotic arm. Participants will gain skills in procedurally sketching methods, machine learning and robotic fabrication within a framework of bidirectional communication between both.
The workshop will be led by Alicia Nahmad (AADRL), Vishu Bhooshan (Zaha Hadid Architects CODE), Cristobal Valenzuela (NYU, RunwayML) and Jose Luis, and will be held at the School of Architecture at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) October 15-17th 2018.
More information on: http://2018.acadia.org/workshops.html
Doctoral candidate Jose Luis García del Castillo co-led the “Tight Squeeze” workshop in the last RobArch 2018 conference at the ETH Zürich along Hakim Hasan (Perkins+Will), Shajay Bhooshan and Leo Bieling (Zaha Hadid Architects CODE), and DDes and former group member Nathan King. The workshop inquired on new models of human-robot collaboration on constrained construction sites, where kinematic freedom of robots is limited, and where high degrees of adaptability and real-time decision making are necessary. After three days of work, two groups of participants built one single prototype with two non-synchronized industrial robotic arms, developing algorithms and interactive input interfaces for adaptation and path planning modification in real time on site.
More information on: http://www.robarch2018.org/tight-squeeze-automated-assembly-spatial-structures-constrained-sites/
Timelapse video: https://youtu.be/GV43Gfe8C74
Prof. Bechthold is heading to China to serve as jury member for the Solar Decathlon China. There are 16 entries, built and ready to be evaluated, in Dezhou, Shandong Province. It is hot and humid there – challenging conditions for the participants!
Biography
Nowhere do the disciplines of art, architecture, and engineering fuse as seamlessly as in the work of inventor Chuck Hoberman, internationally known for his “transformable structures.” Through his products, patents, and structures, Hoberman demonstrates how objects can be foldable, retractable, or shape-shifting.
Hoberman is the founder of Hoberman Associates, a multidisciplinary practice that utilizes transformable principles for a wide range of applications including dynamic architecture, transformable stage sets, consumer products, deployable shelters and structures for aerospace. Examples of his commissioned work include the transforming video screen for the U2 360° world tour (2009-2011), the Hoberman Arch in Salt Lake City, installed at Medals Plaza for the Winter Olympic Games (2002), a retractable dome for the World’s Fair in Hanover, Germany (2000), and ‘Emergent Surface’ (2008) shown at The Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Hoberman has over twenty patents for his transformable inventions, and has won numerous awards for his designs. He is the Pierce Anderson Lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is an Associate faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. We look forward to collaborating with him at MaP+S!
MaP+S researchers to teach a workshop at SmartGeometry 2018
MaP+S faculty Panagiotis Michalatos, doctoral student Jose Luis García del Castillo and former researcher Nono Martínez Alonso were selected this year to teach a workshop at the SmartGeometry 2018 conference in University of Toronto.
The workshop is called Mind Ex Machina, and will explore the creative opportunities at the intersection of robotics and machine intelligence. As per the brief:
Robot programming interfaces are frequently developed to maximise performance, precision and efficiency in manufacturing environments, using procedural deterministic paradigms. While this is ideal for engineering tasks, it may become constraining in design contexts where flexibility, adaptability and a certain degree of indeterminacy are desired, in order to favour the exploratory nature of creative inquiry. This workshop will explore the possibilities of goal-oriented, non-deterministic real-time robot programming through Machine Intelligence (machine learning and artificial intelligence) in the context of collaborative design tasks. We argue that these new paradigms can be particularly fit for robot programming in creative contexts, and can help designers overcome the high entry barrier that robot programming typically features. Participants will be encouraged to explore this possibility through the conception and implementation of machine intelligence-aided interfaces for human-robot collaborative tasks.
More info on https://www.smartgeometry.org/mind-ex-machina
Work by the Adaptive Living Environments (ALivE) group is featured in the March supplements of DOMUS. The article – co-authored by Martin Bechthold and Joanna Aizenberg – highlights ongoing research at Harvard that integrates science and design. Special thanks to James Weaver and Jack Alvarenga for their help with images such as the close-up of the butterfly wing!
We are thrilled to announce the exhibition of the work done by students in the class Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication, led by Prof. Martin Bechthold and Jose Luis Garcia del Castillo.
The exhibition will be open Jan. 30th through Feb. 16th 2018 at the Harvard Ceramics Studio and the opening reception will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 30th at 5 pm.
The translation between architectural design and the subsequent actualization process is mediated by various tools and techniques that allow design teams, fabricators and installers to engage the materiality of architecture. Over the past decade advances in material development have been catalyzed by increasingly robust implementations of digital design and fabrication techniques that have empowered designers through digital modelling, simulation, and the increasingly digital augmentation of all physical processes. Creative applications of material related technologies have produced new forms of expression in architecture, triggered a debate on digital ornament, and continue to advance the performative aspects of buildings. Yet we are only at the beginning of a new age of digital materiality…
The course positions material systems as combinations of design technologies with material processing and manipulation environments. Material systems are positioned as central to a research-based design enquiry that capitalizes on opportunities that emerge when craft-based knowledge is synthesized with CNC-machines, robotic technologies, additive manufacturing and material science. This year’s course will focus on ceramic systems and includes a collaboration with the Harvard Ceramics Studio in Allston (consultant: Kathy King). Ceramics is the first ever material created by mankind – it is omnipresent in the craft-studio as well as in industrial manufacturing settings. Pleasing to the touch and easily manipulated by hand, it can just as easily be subject to digital technologies and robotic approaches. While ceramic-specific aspects of material design and manipulation will be taught emphasis is on understanding ceramics as a microcosm of material research that offers insights which transfer to work with almost any material used in architecture.
Student work from the final review of SCI 6317: Material Systems: Digital Design and Fabrication co-taught by Prof. Martin Bechthold and Jose Luis Garcia del Castilo, in collaboration with the Harvard Ceramics Studio and sponsored by ASCER Tile of Spain.
The end of semester review of SCI 6317 Material Systems will take place on 14 December at the GSD. Our jurors are Prof. Eric Howeler, Prof. Sawako Kaijima (both GSD), Kevin Rothero (Yale University), Jonathan Grinham (DDes ’17), Rachel Vroman (GSD), Nathan King (Virginia Tech and Autodesk, DDes ’13). Several MaP+S researchers will join us as well. 37 students will present their design research projects. Swing by if you are in the neighborhood – we will be in the Portico rooms at Gund!
MaP+S Martin Bechthold is participating in the 2017 RIBA Symposium in Liverpool, UK, organized by Rosa Urbana Gutierrez. The event looks at the future of ceramics in architecture, and includes an exhibition on ceramics in architecture. The show is open until 10 Feb 2018. Hope to see you there!
Our long term collaboration with material scientists from the Wyss Institute has recently led to another paper – this time a review of the reciprocal relationship between materials science and architecture and architectural engineering. The paper can be viewed free online – just follow the link.
Our long term collaboration with the colleagues from the ITE at the TU Graz recently culminated in the opening of the structural ceramic pavilion on the grounds of the castle of St. Martin just outside Graz. Over the last year the ITE team advanced the research that was begun at Harvard’s MaP+S group from a lab project into a site-ready construction system. The project completes a multi-year project that started with an installation at the 2014 Cevisama in Valencia. More soon in a separate posting!
We hope to see many of you at ACADIA 2017 – in our neighborhood at MIT. Nice to not have to travel halfway around the world for a change… On Thursday afternoon we are presenting our work on auxetic systems!
MaP+S M. Bechthold will participate with a lecture and podium discussion in the Future Now Symposium – the conference looks at how the digital impacts ceramic artists. A link to the livestream will be posted shortly.
We have begun work on our next exhibition for the Valenica-based Cevisama – to be held in February 2018. We will update the post as work progresses!
MaP+S is filing our third patent on innovative material systems, with potential applications from buildings to consumer products and medical devices.